I spend my days in a room in a hospital across the street from a park along the southwestern shore of Lake Michigan. My mother is in that hospital room and I am happy to keep her company, help her out, encourage her recovery from surgery, and speak to her doctors and other health care professionals (who seem to be legion and include a surgeon, hospitalist, nephrologist, pulmonologist, oncologist, nurse, nurse aide, palliative care nurse, and social worker).

But I feel the presence of the Lake. It's size generates gravity that pulls on me. Today I was prepared. In late morning, I changed from my street clothes into running tights and top and jacket and set off along the icy trail atop a bluff that paralleled the lake shore, with the Canon PowerShot S100 camera tucked into a pocket.

The plowed trail was icy underfoot and progress was slow - but, flanked by trees weighed down with snow and enlivened by the sharp cold air, I really didn't care about speed. Several points along the route I chose, I detoured toward the edge of the bluff to photograph the Great Lake.

This image was my favorite - the lake, muddy brown toward shore that transitioned into gray-blue and then stronger blue at the horizon. A cloudy, yet complex, sky. And the frame of snowy bluff with trees and shrubs and grass plus the skeleton ends of bare branches hanging down from above.